Cognitive and Health Benefits of Expressive Writing for Family Caregivers Under Stress

University of Toronto

Status and phase: Unknown; Phase 1

Conditions: Anxiety; Stress, Psychological

Treatments: Behavioral: Expressive Writing

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00303147

11438

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this study is to determine if expressive writing is an effective intervention for reducing stress, enhancing cognition, and improving quality of life for caregivers of older adults with dementia

Full description

A significant and growing need exists to support caregivers of older adults with dementia, including methods of support that are easily implemented and targeted at caregivers who can not access multicomponent interventions. The current intervention examines the efficacy of one such approach: expressive writing (EW).

We are examining the efficacy of EW, in terms of its ability to reduce stress, enhance cognition, and improve well-being, by comparing it to two control conditions: objective writing about how caregivers spend their time (time management; TM) and objective writing about non-personal historical events (history writing; HW).

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Primary family caregiver for an older adult with dementia
• Self-reported caregiver stress or burden
• Fluency in written/spoken English

Exclusion criteria

• non-family or non-primary caregiver
• existing use of expressive writing / diary

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)